Zsa Zsa dead at 99!

Zsa Zsa Gabor, a Hollywood icon who personified the joy of glorious, unapologetic celebrity, has died.
She was 99.
The Hungarian-American actress and socialite died Sunday after suffering a heart attack, her publicist Ed Lozzi confirmed to the Daily News. She died in her Los Angeles home.

 

 Gabor survived a series of health problems over the last decade, including an auto accident, a hip replacement, a stroke and a lung infection, and had been on life support the past five years.
 Born in what was then the Austria-Hungarian Empire during World War I, Gabor was discovered in the 1930s as an opera singer. She and her sisters Magda and Eva soon became known more for their uninhibited flair and flamboyant personalities than their stage and musical skills.

Zsa Zsa — the Paris Hilton of her generation — endeared herself to the celebrity media with a quick wit, a rich mane of blond hair, a carefully maintained exotic accent underscored by frequent repetition of the word “Dah-ling,” and a well-polished set of comic one-liners about her love life.

 

“I want a man who’s kind and understanding,” she said. “Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?”
“How many husbands have I had? You mean apart from my own?”
 Gabor worked frequently in the movies and on television in the 1950s. She also appeared in several stage productions, including “Forty Karats” on Broadway.

 

By the early 1960s, however, her own persona had overshadowed most of the characters she was playing, and as early as a 1962 appearance on the sitcom “Mr. Ed,” she was hired to play herself.
She continued in that role for several decades, buttressing guest roles on comedies and dramas with frequent appearances on shows like Johnny Carson’s “The Tonight Show.”

I n many ways she was a prototype for modern-day pseudo-stars like the Kardashians and Hilton. The Hilton connection is particularly fitting because her great-grandfather, hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, was the second of Gabor’s nine husbands.

 

They were married from 1942 to 1946. The union produced her only child, Constance (Francesca) Hilton, born in 1947, after Gabor and Hilton had divorced. She later claimed the pregnancy resulted from rape.
She married Prince Frederic Von Anhalt on Aug. 14, 1986 — 26 years her junior — and they remained hitched until her death. Gabor was predeceased by Eva in 1995, Magda in 1997, and her daughter Francesca in 2015.